Buddhist Monkey arrested with 4.6 million methamphetamine pills, a grenade and ammunition in his car

In what officials are calling ‘not a normal case’, a Buddhist monk has been arrested in Myanmar with 4.6 million methamphetamine pills, a grenade and ammunition were found in his car.

“This is not a normal case, and when we were informed that the monk was arrested, we were all shocked,” says Kyaw Mya Win, a township police officer.

“It is not a very common case, but not impossible to happen. What will happen to the monk is that he will have to give up his monkhood right away and face trial as an ordinary person,” adds Myanmar’s director general of the Religious Affairs Ministry, Soe Min Tun.

It’s unlikely the pills were for personal use. So was he buying the pills for his mates or selling them for other mates?

Myanmar has a history of persecuting the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. In 2012, ‘Buddhist extremists drove tens of thousands of Rohingya out of their homes, many risked their lives to escape in smugglers’ boats; more than 100,000 others are living in squalid internment camps’.

The UN report issued on Friday said Myanmar’s security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that “very likely” amounted to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar has said it is conducting a lawful counterinsurgency campaign.